Published November 15, 2010
Okay, this story doesnt have a title yet. Please let me know if you have any suggestions! Thanks, ~Tee
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"Mercy, mercy, MERCY!" Lloretta's bell-toned voice wafted up through the rafters of the Church. Her pale face was srunched in pain from the way Esther, her friend, was twisting her wrists.
"Okay. Do you want to play again?" Esther asked, letting go of Lloretta's skinny wrists and rubbing her own.
"No! We already played 'Mercy' three times, and you won all of them. Plus, if I scream one more time, the pastor will have us thrown out, and never let back into the Church again." Lloretta whispered as she pushed her light brown hair out of her face.
"Oh, Llori! You're just a scaredy-cat! One more time? Promise I'll go easy!" Esther begged. Llori contemplated her offer. She gazed at Esther's milky skin, bright green eyes, and blond hair.
"Okay, but go easier than last time. That hurt. And if I get home with a broken wrist, Momma'll smack me!" Lloretta agreed, grabbed Esther's skinny wrists, and screamed, "Ready, Essie? GO!" Of course Essie was ready, but Lloretta twisted her arms in excrushiatingly painful angles.
"MERCY! Llori you win, YOU WIN! Let go of me!" Esther screeched. When Lori let go, Esther held her left arm close to her.
"I never knew you were that strong. Llori, if you arm-wrestle the boys in one of their games, we could win the prize money! Fifty cents! Just think!" Essie smiled at the thought of the two shiney quaters they could win. She looked at Llori.
"No, Esther. Those competitions are dangerous. I could get hurt." Lloretta crossed her arms over her blue calico dress and dirty white apron. Esther began to protest, but Llori stopped her. stomped out of the Church's huge oak doors.
The sun beat down on Llori's face as she skipped along the side of the main road in Woodwin. The dust from the dirt roads swirled in the air. Lloretta looked around. The village house surrounded the market in the center of town. The big strong river ran on the outskirts of Woodwin and gave the town a fresh, crisp scent. Trees lined the dirt paths that the villagers called street and shaded Llori's face from the strong morning sun. She smiled. Lloretta was proud of the little town. She loved it and wanted to live here forever. But soon Essie's voice brought her back out of the clouds.
"Llori, Llori! I'm sorry! We don't have to enter the arm wrestling games if you don't want to!" She shouted. Lloretta whirled around,
"Shush! Don't be so loud! If the boys hear you, we could start a fight!" Llori urged. The she heard a voice from behind,
"That, you could." Llori zipped around again to see the source of the voice. It was Matthew, one of the boys at her school, he was hanging upside down from the branch of a tree.
"Does Llori think she can beat me at arm wrestling? I'd like to see 'er try!" He snarled. Matthew jumped down from the tree and started at Lloretta, but in a split second, Esther slid right between them, and pushed Matthew to the dirt.
"Shut up you useless rat fart!" She shouted, "I'll show you how to treat girls the proper way!" And with that, Essie started throwing punched and kicks into Matthew's face, stomach and sides until he had a bloody nose. Esther spit on his forehead.
"Now run home and cry to your Mum! If you say a single thing that so much as hints this incident, you'll be sorry, Matthew James." Esther hissed. Llori stepped up. She wasn't going to pass up a oppertunity like this. Lloretta smiled an evil smiled, and simply said,
"Essere andato," And Matthew's head, which was raised to see Llori, smacked to the ground, and his eyes snapped shut. Llori smiled again.
"Let's go, Ess, and leave this no good louse here." She said. Then Esther and Lloretta strode off into the outskirts of town with the fleeting summer breeze.
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137,563 Literary Works • 672,043 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.
First Impression: Well this was a fun little bit. It didn't seem to have too much plot behind it, and it looked more like just a quick excerpt from a larger novel but it was certainly a pretty decent sounding piece.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Oooh...that's a fun game...depending on who you're playing as that is...
Oof that sounds like a very strict place to be playing such a screamy game. Also if they are going to be thrown out for screaming did they not even get like a warning when screaming earlier. Do they just randomly go like oh they screamed four times...time to throw these kids out?
Okay that description was a little poorly placed there. It sounds kind of out of place there.
Okay...that's a joke right? I mean when two friends are playing obviously you're not twisting an arm with enough strength to actually break a wrist because that sounds very unlikely unless they were secretly enemies.
Well....that's interesting...
That's a pretty decent description there...saying that first...but it kind of breaks up the flow. We had this high tension argument starting and then someone runs out, you kind of want to continue in that vein without taking a detour to describe the beautiful environment. Otherwise it just takes you out of the tension that the story was in.
Uh oh...that doesn't sound too good.
Ooh well that escalated quickly...whoa...wasn't expecting a reaction quite so violent. But considering what he said, he probably had it coming okay...perhaps a slap...but that did seem like a slight overreaction.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall the ending was maybe a little uncalled for...like a little punch here and there would be fine but that seemed a little extreme. Other than that and a couple of nitpicky things this was a pretty decent story.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
It's supposed ot be set in Poland (but Woodwin isn't a real place, i spelled window backwards, wodniw, switched the three last letters around to get win, wodwin, adn added another o, thus was born Woodwin) around the 17/18 hundreds. This was probably unacceptable, but I hope that you can see that Esther is a troublemaker, and doesn't really care about how ladys should act. She is defiant, and therefore says, "Suck it up, world. I don't feel like being ladylike, so I ain't gonna be ladylike.". Haha: When I was four, my brother spit on the ground, so I mimicked him. Then my mom said, "(My name here), that's not ladylike!" I looked at her quizically and asked, "What if I don't wanna be ladylike?" Then spit on the ground again. I got in trouble that day.
~Tee
Thank you. I try to use diolauge, but then I get caught up in that and sort of forget about the description... oh well. Also, I ain't exactly the most wonderful speller in the world, but then there is the fact that I'm blond... but we all have some blond in us. And I'm not pure blond, but strawberry-blond! YAY STRAWBERRIES! P.S. Yes, that was magic, no I didn't make 'essere andato' up, it's Italian for 'be gone'
All right, first off, I like the humor you added to the story, it adds a lot.
Secondly, I'll deal with the grammar issues first:
(It should be opportunity.)
Also, the characters call your main character "Llori" but you use "Lloretta" in the text. It would probably be best to stick with one and not use both. (If you're trying to introduce her full name, you can sneakily add that into the dialogue).
Speaking of dialogue;
This is just a bit on-the-nose, try adding something like this in the description.
I would like to "see" him struggle to untangle himself from the branches, not just effortlessly hop down.
One more thing,
Depending on the age/culture this is set in, (or non-culture/age) this could be the norm in society or completely unacceptable, but I'm not sure where your story is set.
Oooh, is this magic?
For a few more pointers, you spend a lot of time on the dialogue, but there doesn’t seem to be that much description here, it would be nice if you could somehow equally balance the two.
Great character interaction, I love the differences and similarities between the two girls.
Good job, keep it up!
~E.D.